


Five Tattoos Lee Didn't Get (and One He Finally Did)

by callmeonetrack



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 10:39:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9231221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmeonetrack/pseuds/callmeonetrack





	

The night before graduation, his entire squadron sneaks off the base, storming the old quarter of seedy bars and sticky-floored nightclubs. Just before dawn they stumble into the tattoo parlor, crowing about who will be first to get the Fleet coat of arms branded on their bicep. 

Lee slips out in the commotion, heads back to the barracks. It’s not that he doesn’t feel it—Semper Frakking Fi and all—but his father’s words echo in his head, a permanent reminder: A man isn’t a man till he wears the wings of a viper pilot. 

A tattoo just seems superfluous. 

*** 

He looks at the writing on her arm and doesn’t get it. The language is old, dead, and he hasn’t heard it since he was a child, spending too many hours reading books too adult for him in his grandfather’s study. 

“So you’re public property?” Lee reads, head tilting as his eyes follow the curve of creamy flesh, along her arm, across plunging cleavage, and up to eyes sparkling with mischief. “What’s that supposed to mean?” He smirks, dangerous possibilities running through his mind even though his brother’s right there at the table with them. 

She winks. Never answers him. 

*** 

Years later, Zak’s gone, everyone’s gone. Not Kara. He can’t escape her (doesn’t really want to) and watches her furtively. Her skin is familiar to him now, but the ink staining her flesh still contains mysteries. Those curving, enigmatic words flashing from the crook of her elbow. A jagged corner of a pyramid peeping from under the edge of her tanks. And his favorite, the delicate sun swirling against the nape of her neck, hidden beneath her hair now. 

At night, he dreams he is Apollo the sun god. He traces it with his tongue and never wants to wake. 

*** 

“What was that?” Kara asks, as she slams her locker shut. 

“I said, fine, you’re right,” Lee sighs with mock frustration. 

“Maybe I should have that tattooed on your head,” Kara cackles, delighted, and he sees her eyes light up as she says the words. Then she’s grabbing something off the table and leaning into him, pinning him against the bulkhead with a hand to his chest as she scribbles on his skin with the marker she swiped. 

In the head later, he sees the words “Kara was right” scrawled across his forehead. He grins and doesn’t wash it off. 

*** 

Lee sees the black wing darkly banded on her arm and tries not to stare. Not to wonder, if things had been different, if there’d been no frakking New Caprica or maybe if he’d woken up first, what symbol would be theirs. The problem is he always draws a blank. 

What image could possibly encompass everything they’ve been to one another? Everything they might still be, he desperately, secretly hopes? Nothing could. 

After he realizes that, it stings less. Lee’s surprisingly content to know they can’t be reduced to a series of lines and circles that any child could draw. 

*** 

Once Kara’s gone for good, he travels, tells as many people as he can her story. He won’t forget, but he knows she didn’t mean just for him to remember. After a while, Kara starts to become more theirs than his, public property indeed. So, when he runs across an indigenous tribe whose skin is decorated, Lee convinces them to do one for him. Only a crude star and her name, but it’s etched boldly onto the thin skin over his heart. 

He smiles whenever he looks at it and figures it’s only fitting. 

The outside finally matches the inside.


End file.
